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 The government said progress in the investigation was being made
but declined to give details or offer evidence they were closer to
determining who carried out the Monday evening attack at one of
Bangkok's top tourist attractions.
Twenty people were killed in the blast at the Erawan shrine, 14 of
them foreigners including seven from mainland China and Hong Kong.
The only solid evidence seems to be grainy security camera footage
showing an unidentified young man with shaggy hair and dressed in a
yellow shirt leaving a backpack at the scene.
Officials have speculated that the man, last seen on video footage
disappearing into the night on the back of a motorcycle taxi, could
be foreign, or a Thai man pretending to be foreign.
The reward for information leading to his arrest was raised to 3
million baht ($85,000), a police spokesman said.
Initial speculation that the plot could be the work of an
international terror network has for now been set aside.
And on Friday, police chief Somyot Pumpanmuang appeared to
back-track on his suggestion the previous day that the bomber was
probably part of a network of at least 10 people who spent a month
planning the attack.
"We still have no information on international terror groups and
think that there is no link to international terrorism," Somyot told
reporters after attending a multi-faith prayer ceremony outside a
shopping center near the shrine in central Bangkok. "What is clear
is that it was intended to discredit the government, destroy
confidence and make tourists scared and not travel to Thailand," he
told reporters.
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Asked about his suggestion that 10 plotters were probably involved,
Somyot said there might only have been two.
The Erawan shrine, dedicated to a Hindu deity, is hugely popular
with tourists from China.
The government has said Chinese tourists were not believed to have
been specifically targeted. Announcements about the investigation
have been broadcast in both Mandarin Chinese and English.
Two men spotted at the shrine on CCTV and suspected of being the
bomber's accomplices have been cleared, but police were now
suspicious of a woman dressed in black in the footage, said police
spokesman Prawut Thawornsiri.
"Police are asking anyone who is in that CCTV footage to come
forward with information and tell us what they observed that night,"
he said.
(Editing by Robert Birsel and Alex Richardson)
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